There's something that i've been thinking about more and more lately about the art that i've grown up loving. For such a long time, video games has been such a faceless industry, where designers usually get to stay behind the veil, and get to enjoy the fruits of their labour without the public scrutiny. Sure a game can get a bad review, but there usually isn't a particular name that gets blamed like would be the case for music, film, or literature. At the very core of gaming, there seems to be a disconnect between the designers (the creators) and the gamers (the people). My thoughts have been leading me to questions that, i'm not sure if i can answer or even contain a finite answer within themselves. But this is something i've definitely been pondering, and maybe I can get some opinions on it.

East vs West:

There's no real denying the fact that there is a clear divide to how the Western world views game designers, compared to the eastern world. I don't think anyone would argue about the relationship between a name like Steven Spielberg compared to a name like Mark Cerny. On one hand, every one knows who Steven Spielberg is, even if you are not someone who would consider themselves too interested in film. On the other hand, if you are not someone who is invested in the gaming community, you probably have no idea who Mark Cerny is, or why you should know that name. In Japan, I would argue that the name Hayao Miyazaki is as common as Hideo Kojima. Everyone knows both of those names, even if you have never seen a Miyazaki film, or have never played a Kojima game. Eastern developers seem inherently more involved with their games than that of the west, even though it would be silly to think that the case. The director of a game is a director of a game, but there is no way we would tie Bruce Straley & Neil Druckmann to The Last of Us, as much as we would connect Miyamoto with Ocarina of Time. In the West, the company designing the video game matters more than the name attached to it. I would quietly argue that while there are those Western developers who have pushed through their company like: Cliffy B, Ken Levine, and Tim Schafer and managed to become more important than the company developing the game, it still remains a rare occurrence.

Relevance?:

I think it would be silly for me to start out by saying that gaming is more prominent in a country like Japan than it is in the United States, but I think there is definitely something relatable in terms of the origin of the developers. Video games in general are still in their infancy compared to art forms like literature and film and maybe that has something to do with it. There isn't quite a large scale focus on games in terms of legitimate competition to film or literature. At the beginning of every week, on your local radio station you will hear the results of the box office. You can find in your newspaper, the best-seller lists, or a recommendation for new fiction. This kind of wide spread coverage and focus doesn't exist for gaming. Sure there are sites like IGN or GameSpot that are primarily devoted to the coverage of games as a medium that deserves serious media coverage, but at the end of the day, these are niche sites that only people already interested in video games would cling to. My mother rarely watches movies in favour of reading novels, but she still gets a kick out of knowing which movies are supposed to be good, and which movies do well or poorly. My mom could care less how Titanfall is, or if Infamous Second Son will be the first great IP on PS4. She probably doesn't even realize that i'm playing NBA 2K on PS4 rather than PS3, or PS2 for that matter. I think that this is directly related to the age of gaming. The strides that have been made in pop culture alone with video games have been large, and as the digital age begins to mature and become even more dominant, so too will video games. Perhaps the Japanese people clung to games quicker than the west did because, arguably, the first great mark left by gaming in the popular consciousness was the NES, and Nintendo is a Japanese company. In other words, all of these exciting, new ways of experiencing entertainment were happening right in their backyard.

Again, Relevance?:

It is my opinion that as this generation begins to gain momentum, and eventually lead into the next generation, people who have been gaming all their lives will continue to push gaming to the forefront of entertainment because, not only of the voice they will have, but also the platform they will have it on. Gamers in the past could never do what I am doing right now, and have people not only read it, but again, care about it. This brings me to a question that I guess can only be answered by perspective. Does it even really matter? Does it matter if video games are popular on a wide scale mainstream level, or if every nuclear family knows who Ken Levine is? I think it doesn't. These people, like Jonathan Blow or Phil Fish make video games because it's something that they truly care about. It's something that they truly want people to experience because its what they, as gamers, would love to experience. Does Jonathan Blow ever even enter the mind of the conscious game if: one, his game isn't good and two, he doesn't have an outspoken viewpoint on the state of gaming in general. The answer is no and theres really no arguing it. But if Blow never said a word, other than thank you after Braid was released, does it change the game? Does it change the movie if Spielberg speaks like an everyman, or doesn't speak at all? I guess at the end of the day, entertainment mediums are here to entertain, and the people behind it aren't as important as the product they put forward, or on the flip side, artists always need to be appreciated in our society, because it is a pinnacle of human development. Perspective is what decides whats right and wrong, and in this case, I don't think there is a right or wrong.